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  #11  
Unread 05-09-2014, 05:38 PM
Maryann Corbett's Avatar
Maryann Corbett Maryann Corbett is offline
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Thus, much Unjust
still leaves Nonplussed,


I am the contrarian today. I like this for its striking rhyme, and I don't find the syntax all that troubling. Using an adjective for a noun, or omitting the copula, is not unheard of; I read "much [that is] Unjust" without difficulty. And I'm intrigued by the decision I have to make in the next line: is it "me," the N., or the impersonal "one" I should fill in before "Nonplussed"?

My full disclosure is that I've been reading Berryman's Dream Songs and am currently in love with weird grammar and pleased with the small challenges of working it out. Standard syntax, like standard capitalization, would make this poem less interesting.
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  #12  
Unread 05-09-2014, 05:53 PM
Elise Hempel Elise Hempel is offline
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I've already said it, but that fourth couplet is the only one with such close rhyme -- very distracting. Whether I think it's a sonnet or not, it's a nicely simple poem until that word "nonplussed." Awkward and forced. A "big word," as they say, that doesn't seem to belong in the poem. It's not syntax for me but diction.
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  #13  
Unread 05-09-2014, 05:59 PM
L.M. Price L.M. Price is offline
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I probably wouldn't have read this if I'd seen it in a book somewhere or something, but since it was here, and I did, I quite like the beginning and the ending. The 4th & 5th stanzas don't work for me - the fourth is difficult to say and the fifth is just confusing.
I don't know if I would call it a sonnet; it doesn't feel like one to me, but it's an interesting poem.
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  #14  
Unread 05-09-2014, 08:01 PM
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Mary Meriam Mary Meriam is offline
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I just can't make myself like this Not-a-Sonnet. I wish I liked it. I find it annoyingly cryptic, though the caps are vaguely interesting.
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  #15  
Unread 05-09-2014, 09:00 PM
Jean L. Kreiling Jean L. Kreiling is offline
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A little bit clever, but . . . I like Mary's and David's word "cryptic." A sonnet in dimeters can be a brilliantly concise gem, but I'd like those short lines to be packed with intriguing words and/or images; I want the nursery-rhyme lilt to be contradicted by something more clearly disturbing (and I want the lilt to be more precise).
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  #16  
Unread 05-09-2014, 10:06 PM
Marta Finch Marta Finch is offline
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This little poem has nothing of the feel of a sonnet for me. Nor is there the consistent light fun of a nursery rhyme, having too much attention given to the syntax—and even that not successfully—or to trying for the enigmatic. Like a child’s rhyme imitated by a stodgy grown-up? (And yes, the word nonplussed.) I find myself reading it over and over and still ending up saying, “so what?”

One is tempted to think that this poem was chosen solely to stir up controversy.
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  #17  
Unread 05-09-2014, 10:28 PM
Andrew Frisardi Andrew Frisardi is offline
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Sonnet or not this one elicits a big hippo yawn for me. I'll just go on chewing my swamp grass, thanks.
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  #18  
Unread 05-09-2014, 10:30 PM
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Catherine Chandler Catherine Chandler is offline
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A sonnet? Maybe.

A successful poem? Not for me, anyway. I find the capitals a pretentious distraction. ED wannabee?

I understood N as being the "Man" in question. A sort of internal dialogue by a man, perhaps past his prime. Teetering on the brink of self-pity.

I don't think the poem comes even near to being good enough to provoke "controversy".

Last edited by Catherine Chandler; 05-09-2014 at 10:33 PM.
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  #19  
Unread 05-10-2014, 02:45 AM
Alex Pepple Alex Pepple is offline
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FYI - The original post of the sonnet was missing spacing intended by the author. I've just added them.

...Alex
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  #20  
Unread 05-10-2014, 02:56 AM
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Ann Drysdale Ann Drysdale is offline
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Like Cyn, I read this aloud. Several times. I am not a gesticulator as a rule, but I found myself pausing and physically reaching on each of the capitalised words, making a gap into which more words came, silently. The words that were necessary to make it make sense. To me. Other people will have different words, different hooks on which to hang the anger.

I could put my words in and scan them into a conventional sonnet. But if I did it would be a different poem - and an utterly conventional statement of the bleeding obvious. So I won't. But you could if you wanted to.
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